Primus inter pares

The State Ethics Commission gave Jim Rex’s campaign manager Zeke Stokes a major slap on the wrist.

July 19, 2007

Stokes sent tens of thousands of emails (he had over 60,000 at his disposal) to state government email addresses extolling the virtues of Jim Rex, then a candidate for Education Superintendent.His defense?Other people did it and “I assumed that it was proper.”Now that’s a really good defense.

In order to punish Stokes for emailing these overtly political messages to state government email addresses which is a clear violation of the state ethics law, the Ethics Commission slapped him with a $50 fine!That’s less than 8/100ths of a cent per email.

The lesson here is that anyone can now send unlimited political messages to government email addresses for less than pennies on the dollar, and all you have to do is claim ignorance of the law.Not only did Zeke have to pay this hefty $50 fine, but he was rewarded by being given a nice contract (up to $1,200/week) from Jim Rex to make Rex look good and send even more messages to state email addresses.

Sadly, this type of rot and blatant corruption is what we’ve come to expect as the norm at the State Department of Education.While our children suffer and fall further behind, these folks are playing politics.

The moral of the story is:Send out all the political emails you want .you get paid handsomely in the end.

Randall S. Page, President

South Carolinians for Responsible Government 3020 Devine Street Columbia, South Carolina 29205